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About The Melody

From the award-winning author of Harvest, Quarantine, and Being Dead, a tender new novel about music, celebrity, local intrigue, and lost love.

Aside from his trusty piano, Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his tiny Mediterranean town for his music, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days. Then one night, Busi is wrested from bed by noises in his courtyard and then stunned by an attacking intruder–his hands and neck are scratched, his face is bitten. Busi insists his assailant was neither man nor animal.

The attack sets off a chain of events that will cast a shadow on Busi’s career, imperil his home, and alter the fabric of his town. Busi’s own account of what happened is embellished to fan the flames of old rumor–of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest. It is also used to spark new controversy, inspiring claims that something must finally be done about the town’s poor, the feral vagabonds at its edges, whose numbers have been growing.

In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, all while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change–with echoes of today’s most pressing social questions.

About The Melody

From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Harvest, Quarantine, and Being Dead, a tender new novel about music, celebrity, local intrigue, and lost love–all set by the Mediterranean Sea

Aside from his trusty piano, Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his town for his music and songs, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days, occasionally performing the classics in small venues–never in the stadiums he could fill when in his prime. On the night before receiving his town’s highest honor, Busi is wrested from bed by noises in his courtyard and then stunned by an attacking intruder–his hands and neck are scratched, his face is bitten. Busi can’t say what it was that he encountered, exactly, but he feels his assailant was neither man nor animal.

The attack sets off a chain of events that will cast a shadow on Busi’s career, imperil his home, and alter the fabric of his town. Busi’s own account of what happened is embellished to fan the flames of old rumor–of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest–and to spark new controversy: something must finally be done about the town’s poor, the feral vagabonds at its edges, whose numbers have been growing. All the while Busi, weathering a media storm, must come to terms with his wife’s death and decide whether to sing one last time.

In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, all while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change–with echoes of today’s most pressing social questions.

About The Melody

From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Harvest, Quarantine, and Being Dead, a tender new novel about music, celebrity, local intrigue, and lost love–all set by the Mediterranean Sea

Aside from his trusty piano, Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his town for his music and songs, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days, occasionally performing the classics in small venues–never in the stadiums he could fill when in his prime. On the night before receiving his town’s highest honor, Busi is wrested from bed by noises in his courtyard and then stunned by an attacking intruder–his hands and neck are scratched, his face is bitten. Busi can’t say what it was that he encountered, exactly, but he feels his assailant was neither man nor animal.

The attack sets off a chain of events that will cast a shadow on Busi’s career, imperil his home, and alter the fabric of his town. Busi’s own account of what happened is embellished to fan the flames of old rumor–of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest–and to spark new controversy: something must finally be done about the town’s poor, the feral vagabonds at its edges, whose numbers have been growing. All the while Busi, weathering a media storm, must come to terms with his wife’s death and decide whether to sing one last time.

In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, all while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change–with echoes of today’s most pressing social questions.

About The Melody

From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Harvest, Quarantine, and Being Dead, a tender new novel about music, celebrity, local intrigue, and lost love–all set by the Mediterranean Sea

Aside from his trusty piano, Alfred Busi lives alone in his villa overlooking the waves. Famed in his town for his music and songs, he is mourning the recent death of his wife and quietly living out his days, occasionally performing the classics in small venues–never in the stadiums he could fill when in his prime. On the night before receiving his town’s highest honor, Busi is wrested from bed by noises in his courtyard and then stunned by an attacking intruder–his hands and neck are scratched, his face is bitten. Busi can’t say what it was that he encountered, exactly, but he feels his assailant was neither man nor animal.

The attack sets off a chain of events that will cast a shadow on Busi’s career, imperil his home, and alter the fabric of his town. Busi’s own account of what happened is embellished to fan the flames of old rumor–of an ancient race of people living in the surrounding forest–and to spark new controversy: something must finally be done about the town’s poor, the feral vagabonds at its edges, whose numbers have been growing. All the while Busi, weathering a media storm, must come to terms with his wife’s death and decide whether to sing one last time.

In trademark crystalline prose, Jim Crace portrays a man taking stock of his life and looking into an uncertain future, all while bearing witness to a community in the throes of great change–with echoes of today’s most pressing social questions.

About Jim Crace

Jim Crace is the author of eleven previous novels. His most recent, Harvest, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2000, Being Dead won the U.S. National Book Critics… More about Jim Crace

About Jim Crace

Jim Crace is the author of eleven previous novels. His most recent, Harvest, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2000, Being Dead won the U.S. National Book Critics… More about Jim Crace

About Jim Crace

Jim Crace is the author of eleven previous novels. His most recent, Harvest, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2000, Being Dead won the U.S. National Book Critics… More about Jim Crace

About Jim Crace

Jim Crace is the author of eleven previous novels. His most recent, Harvest, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2000, Being Dead won the U.S. National Book Critics… More about Jim Crace

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Praise

“Superb . . . It felt as if the book itself had created an atmosphere around me, as if I’d entered its world involuntarily—and I wasn’t surprised. That’s how immersive Crace’s latest trickster tale truly is.”—Bethanne Patrick, NPR

“Jim Crace writes with great flair and inimitable imagination . . . The Melody is a lyrical and tender meditation on marital love and loss that further secures his position as one of Britain’s most distinctive and accomplished novelists.”—Financial Times

“Extraordinary . . . The Melody is an elegiac ode of its own that confronts the evanescence of life. What begins with a memory jogged by the soft tinkling of bells becomes a haunting refrain of enduring love. In underscoring Crace’s genuineness, the novel champions the benefits of friendship and community in the face of inexorable progress and change.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“The Melody takes its place among Crace’s finest novels . . . Both grippingly symbolic and intensely real; it deepens and accrues in rhythmic prose that might itself be the melody of the title.”—The Guardian

“[A] seductively atmospheric novel, suffused as it is with archetypes and the stuff of dreams . . . It’s an elegy, too—for lost love, youth and talent—and deeply moving.”—Daily Mail

“Hypnotic and powerful . . . Enchanting and disconcerting . . . It offers a substantial rebuff to the idea, frequently remarked upon, that the novel in general, and the English novel in particular, has less and less to offer the modern reader.”—The Irish Times“A brutal parody of urban renewal and its casualties . . . With devastating understatement, Crace offers a parable for a time in which empathy has given way to callousness and fear. —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Haunting and transfixing . . . Like the simple but subtle song from which the novel takes its title, The Melody’s effects linger, coloring the reader’s feelings about the thin border between the natural world and human society.”—Publishers Weekly

“Exploring ideas of myth, grief, and inequality, Crace’s latest is an ethereal novel that ambles and simmers towards a delightful conclusion.”—Booklist